There’s no such thing as a free website

David Groskind, Reed Construction Data – Canada

At the end of last year the Federal Trade Commission addressed the issue of what it calls “online behavioral advertising privacy”. Its goal was encouraging self-regulation. It proposed:

Every Web site where data is collected for behavioral advertising should provide a clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement that data is being collected to provide ads targeted to the consumer and give consumers the ability to choose whether or not to have their information collected for such purpose.

The part about giving consumers a veto over having their information collected raised many concerns with the Newspaper Association of America, which submitted a response on April 11, 2008.

Reading the NAA's response is interesting not just for its thoughts on privacy but for what it says about the key role it sees for behavioral targeting in the survival of newspaper websites. The NAA says:

Newspaper websites increasingly are considering ways to tailor the content presented to a reader more closely to their interests, as shown both by what they voluntarily disclose and by their actions. The “customized” newspaper, long an objective in the print world but difficult to implement on anything less than a broad geographic basis, is far more possible online. It is easy to imagine a local newspaper website offering highly customized editions to different website users. Indeed, The Washington Post currently offers different versions of its washingtonpost.com website to local and out-of-town viewers, providing an early example of what may come in the future.

It states explicitly that newspapers have abandoned any hope that news websites can generate revenue from online subscriptions and regarding a visitor veto, it notes:

a broad reading of this proposed principle could, in practice, allow users to disrupt the normal operations of an online newspaper to such an extent as to impair its ability to provide desirable service and attract the financial support that pays for the “free” content.

The alternative the NAA offers to the FTC's suggestion is simple:

The consumer always has the right to avoid “unwanted” tracking by choosing not to use a website altogether. Correspondingly, a website (especially one dependent upon advertising revenue to support free content) has the legal right to refuse deeper access to users who do not wish to be “tracked”...

There must be a diplomatic way to tell visitors that if they don't like the privacy policy, they can take their eyes elsewhere. However, if behavioral tracking is the key to a news website's survival, there won't be many places for them to go.

The FTC proposals are worth reading in full for an idea of what the privacy policy of the future may look like.

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